Timed to perfection

Sourav Ganguly has always played cricket-and lived-on his own terms. His standards are uniquely his own, be it batting or fitness, success or failure. He could be a cricketer of sublime beauty and a competitor unafraid to look ugly, a man capable of great generosity and surprise, and an equally baffling source of frustration.

So when he said, "Just one last thing, lads..." at a conference in Bangalore, it could have been any last thing. The team is not practicing tomorrow. I'm going into politics. The Nano would have been good for Bengal. Close the door after you, please.

But instead, Ganguly surprised India yet again. He announced his retirement, left the galaxy of critics open-mouthed and off balance and before anyone had time to recover, Ganguly had left the building.

Given his history- and histrionics that seemed to accompanying every hairpin bend in his career-it was always expected that Ganguly would only go kicking and screaming, in a state of denial to the last. That the well-timed, dignified farewell was not his thing.

But this was classic Ganguly too-and timing has always been his thing. His career had been spent defying prediction and convention- for himself and the men he led. If he was expected to rage against his own mortality as an international cricketer, it was precisely the kind of thing he would not do.

When he sighted the opportunity to make his own decision, Ganguly took it swiftly. In a months' time, he will leave, forever an original.

When Ganguly sighted the opportunity to make his own decision, he took it swiftly

But what if he is part of some loathsome deal struck with the BCCI to give him a decent farewell? Men in the Board who want to paint themselves bigger than the players will maintain it was.

Ganguly and the other Indian seniors will forever deny it. We will each believe what we believe and the choice here is between the essential contrariness of Ganguly and the farsighted, team-centric plan of the BCCI.

As he did with his leadership, Ganguly has set the tone among his peers. The most incendiary of Indians has admitted that the fires have gone conclusively cold.

Cricket at 30-something is a struggle in which a player's peak mental awareness must manage the slow erosion of physical skills. Every day is a tussle between the will and the inexorable passage of time and it is not ever a fair contest.

John Wright, the coach with whom captain Ganguly frequently knocked heads as captain and also set new benchmarks, says ageing batsmen first sense an inner loss-of an 'earliness' that is as natural as breathing.

A shot that would have zipped to the fence now only fetches two because the old self was early on it. "Deep down," says Wright, "you know. You can still get the job done, play for a bit then the game catches up with you."

In the last few years of his career, Ganguly did more than merely get body to obey mind, using every last scrap of resolve to fight his way back into the team. Those combined circumstances have gained on him.

In Sri Lanka, his batting had none of the authority it had in England when he looked confident, dominant and 25 again. The fluency found early in Australia and his disdainful command over spin deserted him too.

Before the series against Australia, Ganguly had two poor innings in Chennai against the unregarded New Zealand-A. He came into the Bangalore as undone as a truant's school tie. There was a threat to kidnap his daughter.

For a player whose career has gone by with a background debate about who and what he really is, maybe all of it suddenly seems stifling and irrelevant.

Maybe he wants to taste once more what cricket feels like without the noise of argument. And so he will. And like it always is with this elegant, obstinate, surprising cricketer, India will be riveted- right to the end. Go well, Sourav.

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